Wednesday 28 November, 2007:

Hello again,

It’s been a little while because we missed a week due to illness and work constraints. Determined not to be put off however we rescheduled our Warhammer three-way for the following week and this is how it went:

The armies were interesting. Everyone had new and horrible units they wished to try out. Johnny had a Treeman and some Wild Riders for his Wood Elves, Olly had a flame cannon and some Slayers for his Dwarves and I had my giant for the Orcs and Goblins. With these units guzzling points, the remainder of the armies were bulked out with:-

Wood Elves – Hero on a horse, 2 units of Glade Guard and a unit of Dryads.
Dwarves – a Master Engineer attached to a normal cannon, a unit of Thunderers and a unit of Rangers.
Orcs and Goblins – Night Goblin Boss on Great Squig, 2 Spear Chuckers, Boar Chariot, unit of Black Orcs, unit of Orc Boys and 2 units of Night Goblin Archers each containing a fanatic.

The Game started with the most amazing piece of Elven bad luck ever seen. The rangers infiltrated right across the board from their gun-toting colleagues but fearlessly marched off to do battle with the elves alone. They failed to be terrified by the Treeman who, startled by this brazen disrespect for his large model status, failed a morale test and lumbered off of the board. In their victory trundle the Rangers also caught up with a unit of Glade Guard and heartily hacked down and scattered them to. With fully half his army off the board the Wood Elf general bravely galloped forward to show his courage. Astonishingly, the power of the Ward Save was demonstrated when he survived – just – a full gout from the flame cannon. Braving a storm of lead, the remaining Elves advanced on the Dwarf line with shockingly few casualties and eventually burst the flame cannon’s bellows (we couldn’t think of any other explanation) with Glade Guard arrows. The bereft cannon crew charged only to be similarly peppered with deadly wooden shafts. The Thunderers, after a rather poor showing considering their usual terrifying performance, were overridden by the Wild Riders and wiped out.

Alarmed by the infiltrating Rangers and the unstoppable dryad horde, the Night Goblins set up a firing line on the Orc left flank to await their inevitable goblin death. Their fanatics proved just as hopeless as usual, one tripped over a bit of swamp his unit was hiding in and strangled himself. The second ran screaming towards the advancing dryads, changed his mind and ran back again. Just when it looked like he would cut a swathe through his allies he fell in a muddy pool and drowned. It should also be mensioned that the 20 Goblin bowshots inflicted not a single wound either. Needless to say the Goblins did meet their being chopped up and running away goblin destinies.

The Giant got all excited and ran off around the back of a farm. He met a cannon ball coming the other way which really hurt. This enraged him so he charged the cannon and its Engineer. His initial charge resulted in him bellowing madly which everyone found highly off-putting so nothing else happened. Seeing the lack of fear in his tiny enemies, the giant proceeded to jump up and down with rage. This proved to be an exciting thing to do as he squashed two of the crew. Seeing the fun and squishy results of this activity, he continued leaping about and succeeded in squashing the cannon flat (all three wounds off in one go) with a single bound. The resulting stumble also pulverised the Engineer. The remaining crewman ran off in terror but the Giant persued him gleefully off of the table to come staggering back a little later to see what else was happening.

The Black Orcs and Chariot waited behind their smaller Orc cannon fodder but were impeded by their unruly brethren stopping in their Wagh to have a minor scuffle amongst themselves. This central block of Orcs achieved absolutely nothing in the game but did survive the carnage to have a loud and violent victory party.

The Spear Chuckers also proved of little worth with one having to spend the entire game moving around terrain and the other rolling three misses and then being stopped by an unexpectedly sturdy piece of Troll Slayer underwear “anything but a 1 to wound…” “And you can wipe that grin off of your face!”

The Great Squig carried its master on an incredibly eratic course which eventually lead into the back of a unit of Wild Riders who were rather heroically cleaving their way through the Slayer unit with several really exciting and close rounds of combat. With his magical weapon-thingy the Goblin smote two riders to their ruin and even the Squig got all excited and bit the back end off of a horse. At that point the Giant wandered back and, seeing such an interestingly noisy fight happening right in front of him got all smily and prepared to charge…

Then we checked the time and noticed it was high time for bed “what with work and all” (youthful vigour? Where?)

The game was an Orc and Goblin victory by dint of there being loads of them left. The Chariot, Black Orcs and scuffling Boys had survived intact along with Lord Boing (not original but still funny) and half the Giant. The two Spear Chuckers were there somewhere but they were boring so I refuse to recognise their tenacity. The Dwarves still had around half the Slayer unit and a worryingly-intact unit of Rangers stumping about where they had no business being. The Elves General was rather dramatically impaled by a Ranger throwing axe in the last turn but the Dryads were hewing their way merrily into Orc territory, a few highly-accurate Glade Guard were flitting about in the background and one or Two Wild Riders were galloping merrily away from a rather rules-intensive three-way combat.

The dwarves still had the afore-mentioned Rangers and Slayers but nothing else.

All in all a great game. We were a lot more confident on the rules this time and the game felt smoother. A great many funny and strange things happened including deeds of both great heroism and courage and outstanding stupidity and humour. It kept close most of the way through. And just think: without the cowardly Ent it could have been so different.

Our up-coming game is a rather exciting sojourn into the plots and shadows of the World Of Darkness story-telling game system from White Wolf. I shall be telling a story of horror in present day Cambridge in Vampire: The Requiem. Come back and see how we get on with our first session.

Commander Portman